Outdoor lambing

Our weather is wild, wild, wild here this evening. We are experiencing extremely strong winds and driving snow/sleet Absolutely horrible.

Our electricity has now gone off, so that means no lighting or heating, as well as no cooker, TV etc etc. Total pain in the butt!

Thankfully our ewes aren't due to start lambing for another three weeks, but this weather (and the previous three months of snow) is really going to affect a lot of farmers and shepherds trying to lamb outdoors and could have absolutely disastrous consquences

Oh dear! Glad your lambs have got another 3 weeks to go, hopefully the weather will be better and they will have a better chance

What a nightmare it would be just now!

The farmer down the lane has moved some into the fields behind us today.....the noise is SO pitiful.....but the wind is high and its a bit chilly (probably nowhere near what it is with you!)

Hope it is clear before you start.

The weather here really is horrendous!! Our bolted down gazebo took off today!!
Its really not the weather to be having horses in!! anyone want them til spring has sprung???

I really hope the weather is a lot better before you start lambing, I can only begin to imagine what a nightmare that would be,

I hope the leckys back on for you soon as well......what a nightmare being stuck in the dark with the kids... big hug

was just talking to my mum and apparently the farmers call this 'lambing snow' cos it always bloomin snows on them in lambing time
not usualy as bad as this
they are right up in the highlands

I can sort of sympathise, we woke up on Wednesday morning, to find a hole lot of snow, and no electric!

The sheep where I live, aren't due to lamb for another 3 weeks I think.
Other shepherds that I know have got lambs popping out now, and with no electirc, have had no way of getting them in and warm. A friend had twins in a dog cage in front of her aga, to try and warm them up, and luckily now, they seem strong and are back in with their mum! (She ran off and left them in the snow!)

We went for a chippy last night and apparently a local shepherds wife went to get dinner and had tears in her eyes when asked how they were coping with the lambs and the weather, and she said that her husband went in at lucnh time and just started to cry because they were using so many lambs!

I really feel for everyone lambing outside, this weather is going to be a major major setback for them.

And who says farmers are hard and don't care for their animals, only seeing them as £££££'s. That's a lovely story, Misty Pup.

The weather is really taking its toll round our way

I heard last night that a number of local farmers have had nearly all lambs born dead. They're thinking it must've been down to lack of enough food during the bad snow earlier on.

Having moved many off the hills to avoid the snow, the farmers are now suffering from the flooding - so many rivers and burns have burst their banks and flooded the neighbouring fields, its untrue. Not all the sheep had been moved from some of these fields I saw yesterday and now I'm just praying that either the waters haven't got any higher, or that the farmers were able to move them in time.

I just dread to think what this is going to do the farmer's livelihood - its a hard enough life as it is without potentially losing nearly a whole lambing.

As someone said this week, it is not lambing time, it is salvage time

We lost our electricity for 5 days (complete nightmare with two young children!) with electricity poles down and smashed all over the place. And the phone lines were also down - for two weeks (just fixed this afternoon)! Aaargh - no way of contacting anyone (as we have no mobile signal and no broadband). We had as much snow in 24 hours as we had all winter!

Lambing is a disaster We have had dozens of dead ewes - buried under snow or drowned in fast flowing burns. We have had a number of lambs stillborn or dying soon after birth, and have dozens of lambs needing to be bottled fed four and five times a day, as their mothers are too weak to feed them, have died, or simply abandon them.

A very difficult and sad time.